Ars Technica and Huffington post now both boast their own iPad apps.
Our application is 99 percent written using HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript
OK, this is where I need to channel Lewis Black. Gee, it sounds like a fucking website. Read a little further and you’ll discover that:
One of the most liberating parts of developing this application was the prospect of targeting a single browser engine: very recent versions of Webkit.
Wow. So it’s like a website except that it only supports one browser, Webkit. In other words, it won’t work on Windows Phone 7, and it won’t work any better on devices which have Webkit than their existing website does already.
I’m sure that developing a website entirely in .NET is equally “liberating”.
Why do I want an iPad App for a website? If the content is already available on the web then any investment in that website should be in making it a better website, and not in balkanizing its content. Even if the Ars Technica App were fabulous, which I’m led to believe is far from the case, there’s no reason on Earth for it to have an iPad App. It’s just like having a version of your website that is gratuitously different and doesn’t let you, say, view another site in a different tab, or use a bookmarklet for tweeting.
And if you’re going to build a custom browser centered on the idea of offline reading, why center it on one website?
You know what I hate? Visiting a perfectly decent website, like IMDB, which now has its own iPad/iPhone app and having to navigate past a page telling me I should try this stupid piece of shit to get to a web page that is perfectly usable in my existing web browser.
You eediots.
Oh, and Apple shouldn’t approve these pieces of crap. They’re basically one step to the side of fart apps.